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1 Billion Facebook Users On Earth: Are We There Yet?

Back in June 2010, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 1 billion users on Facebook is “almost a guarantee that it will happen.” Fast forward two years and Facebook revealed it has more than 955 million monthly active users, as of end of June 2012.

There is much anticipation for Facebook to breach the 1 billion users mark. Earlier this year, a prediction saying the social networking giant would reach 1 billion users in August 2012 has garnered plenty of attention. August came and gone and there is still no official declaration of achievement from Facebook.

So, is Facebook going to surpass 1 billion users in the remaining three months of 2012? To answer the question, l turn to the Facebook’s estimation tool to find out the current total Facebook users in over 200 nations. (Note: The tool is freely available to advertisers on Facebook’s self-serve ads module).

Based on the figures extracted from the estimator, there is a total of 943 million Facebook users across 211 nations, as of September 30, 2012. A year ago today, the total was 710.3 million. That means, Facebook population has been growing by 33% in the past 12 months.

The 943 million users is notably less than the official estimate of more than 955 million users. How accurate are the figures from the estimation tool? According to a Facebook employee on Quora, the estimation is “a pretty reasonable indicator.”

Let’s assume the accuracy of the pretty reasonable indicator and take a stab at the 1 Billion Users question. If Facebook can grow by 6% (or more) in the last quarter of 2012, it is then possible for the social networking giant to finally become the first social networking site in the world with 1 billion users this year.

Top Facebook Nations

United States remains on top with 166 million users, followed by Brazil and India. Brazil has been growing aggressively in the past 12 months with close to 100% growth rate and has surpassed India to become Facebook Nation No. 2.

Thailand also registered almost 100% growth rate – from 8.4 million in September 2011 to 16.8 in September 2012. Egypt remains the top Facebook nation in the Middle East region and managed to overtake Venezuala and Chile to clinch the 20th spot in the list, thanks to its 108% growth. But that growth rate seems meager compared to Japan’s growth rate of over 500% – growing from 2.5 million to 15.5 million users in the 12 months period!

The total number of users in the top 20 Facebook nations is 682.5 million, or 72% of total Facebook users globally. Coincidentally, all these nations are in the More Than 10 Million Users grouping.

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